Identification cards in the form of credit cards, bank cards, cash payment cards and so on are increasingly used for cashless transfers in a great variety of service branches and also within enterprises. Due to their wide use, they are typically mass produced since, on the one hand--i.e. their production must be simple and inexpensive, and on the other hand, they must be designed in such a way that they are protected against forgery and falsification to as great an extent as possible. The many kinds of identification cards already on the market or still in the development phase indicate the efforts of the relevant industry to optimize the two abovementioned contradictory conditions.
In particular, it is necessary to protect the data relating to the card owner, which are applied to the identification card during so-called "personalization", in such a way that they cannot be subsequently manipulated. One possibility which has proved very useful in practice is to embed a paper inlay designed as a security print in a multilayer card. The paper inlay equipped with authenticity features such as watermarks, security threads, steel intaglio printing, etc., all used in the production of security documents, meets the highest standards of security and is protected against a great variety of types of attempted forgery and falsification, due to the protection of the data by means of transparent cover films.
Mainly because of their much more simple and inexpensive production, all-plastic identification cards are also used in the identification card field. The security inlay is replaced by a simple dyed film or the identification card data and the general printing are applied to the outer surface of a small plastic card, which may possibly have a multilayer construction.
In spite of their economic advantages, such all-plastic identification cards have proved to be particularly unsuitable in that it is relatively easy to forge them due to their relatively simple construction, which is equipped with authenticity features only conditionally. The printing being directly accessible, the personalization data are exposed to any attempted falsification without much protection to speak of.
German Pat. No. 29 07 004, taking such aspects of security and production technology into consideration, discloses an identification card with a card inlay of paper and a transparent cover film. The personal data are inscribed in the card inlay by means of a laser beam after lamination of the cover film. This information can be burned into the inlay or else be present in the form of a color change in a thermosensitive coating applied to the paper inlay.
Along with the advantage that this kind of identification card can have its construction completed before personalization and that it is possible to provide such a completed, laminated card with the necessary information centrally or decentrally, this kind of identification card also offers a high degree of protection against attempted forgery and falsification, since its data are protected against direct access by the cover film.
If the personalization data are burned into the inlay, a so-called "translucent effect" is obtained depending on the intensity of the writing, i.e. the data are more or less clearly visible on the back of the identification card as well. This allows for verification of the personalization data in a particularly simple manner (transmitted light testing from the back of the card). In various cases, however, this may be regarded as a disadvantage or undesirable due to a certain impairment of its visual appearance.
Since the information is burned into the paper inlay, the quality of the writing also depends on the superficial structure of the identification card material, which may be troublesome in the case of a very sturdy superficial structure.
The problem on which the invention is based is therefore to provide an identification card in which the above-mentioned advantages are retained but any card cores of plastic or paper may be used, and the aspects possibly regarded as disadvantageous in the use of paper inlays are avoided.